12 Vietnam stories that never need writing again
(Or filming, YouTubing, Instagramming, tweeting etc)
1. Communist capitalists
Juxtapose an old lady in a conical hat with a Rolls Royce. Tell us about the luxury pho that cost $35 a bowl. Pan out from the Old Quarter so we can see the skyscrapers. Tell us about your cyclo driver who has an iPhone.
2. McDonalds opens / America wins! USA! USA! etc
It’s the subtext of every food franchising opening story ever in Vietnam and there are fucking thousands of them.
And really? All it took was American food franchises opening? That was it? You’ve won now? You want to pretend millions of lives were lost over McNugget availability? You really want to look that bad?
Still, at least good honest capitalism will bring opportunities for all and help promote a meritocracy…
3. Joan Baez in the Metropole underground bomb shelter that the hotel “lost” until its PR department dug it up.
They lost a bomb shelter?
Okaaaay.
The Metropole seems less fond of mentioning Jane Fonda who also used it. Seems she’s not such a hit with their clientele.
Meanwhile, outside John McCain was unloading bombs on poor Vietnamese people who didn’t have shelters. Soak up that colonial spirit.
Travel journalism. They comp your hotel room, you print the press release.
4. Vietnam vet returns seeking “closure”
Amazingly people are friendly.
They call it the “American war”.
5. Interviewing white men about food made by Vietnamese women.
“Wow, you’re getting pretty good at chopsticks!”
6. Rapping for freedom
Hip hop artists who have to be guarded in their lyrics but not apparently in interviews with western media. I never quite worked that one out.
Foreign correspondents love rapping. Because it’s FREEDOM!
And FREEDOM-loving hip hop will kill communism.
Right?
The chasm between how western countries like to be seen as funky liberals overseas compared with all that dog whistle far-right rhetoric back home has always tickled me.
Rapping ambassadors anyone?
As for the Hanoi International Women’s Committee rapping — how much can you watch?
7. Egg bloody coffee
Made up stat that feels right…on any given day 100% of people drinking egg coffee in Vietnam are tourists.
No Vietnamese person has ever said to me: “Fuck, I’m gagging for an egg coffee”.
I’ve never been to a Vietnamese person’s house and watched while they’ve got their mixing bowl out to whip me up some of “Hanoi’s beloved egg coffee”.
One place served this stuff 10 years ago as a gimmick and now it’s everywhere because travel bloggers. It’s a drink that’s best consumed via Instagram and yet the travel pieces, full of utter entirely unresearched bullshit just KEEP ON COMING.
“In Hanoi it’s all about egg coffee!”
NO IT FUCKING ISN’T. WHO THE FUCK DID YOU ASK?
8. Eating snake
Vietnamese, for the most part eat pork, chicken and fish but travelling journos insist on snake. It reinforces a stereotype and commissioning editors like that shit.
It’s a tradition — for the most part as a backpacker thing — it dates back to The Beach and that was in Thailand.
It’s what Vietnamese people do, right?
Honey — I’m home! What’s for dinner?
It’s snake dear — your favourite!
I’ll spell this out for you — if you eat snake in Vietnam, especially if it’s for viewers or clicks, you are a fucking moron. Don’t embarrass your “fixer” by asking them to take you to snake village.
9. Ostentatious wealth
Too Communist, too capitalist — damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Don’t think that rising out of poverty is going to win you any credit from the international media. Worked hard? Bought a house and car? That’s a “mansion” and a “luxury” vehicle in their eyes.
You’re not just richer — you’re “elite”. It’s not just an off licence or a liquor store — it’s a “fine wine” shop. You are not allowed to be wealthy without your wealth being “ostentatious”. Are the wealthy of developing countries ever cut much slack? Roads are “flanked by palm trees”? It’s the fucking tropics — everything is flanked by palm trees!
So you can rent a four bedroom apartment in Ciputra for $700 a month with just enough parking space for a scooter. Don’t let that get in the way of the cliches — just keep typing.
Thanks to E.B. for this suggestion.
10. “Bikini airline” VietJet Air
Seriously click the link above and watch the footage — not the poor bikini girls but the frequent “check it outs” and the “$958 which is real money in Ho Chi Minh City” (WTAF?)
Listen to the Bloomberg suits cream themselves over this and they’ve been creaming themselves ever since. This is what I imagine people who go to golf clubs talk like.
At what point Bloomberg, is it YOU that are the 70s throwbacks? How many times must you bait this link and share bikini pictures before it’s YOU that’s monetising flesh? Out of interest I spent 30 seconds Googling “bikini” and assorted other airlines and most across the world have done something similar.
Now let’s be clear here. VietJet are utterly pukesome and their repeated use of bikini girls for promotion is just plain awful. But this near-universal pretence among foreign media that the bikini is actually the official daily uniform of Vietjet’s flight attendants is just a lie.
That “Vietnamese airline staffed by models in bikinis” story continues to travel around the globe. You did that.
11. Good morning Vietnam!
Please, just please, enough. Visiting journalists do a little more research. Get a wider frame of reference. Stop being a fucking idiot. Vietnam has existed for 40 years since your war. There are other narratives and plenty of new stories to tell.
12. It’s not a fucking curfew
Here’s the thing — for most of my pre-Vietnam life in the UK we had “closing time” at 11pm. I understand things are a little more flexible there now but decisions around extended drinking are complex. Public order, policing, noise, health — it goes on.
Okay remember the above.
Now let’s move onto curfews. This is a curfew:
A regulation that states that bars have to shut at a certain time is not a curfew. It’s a closing time.
Vietnamese, Hanoians, expats, tourists do not have to be in their homes by midnight. If they did then, yes, that would be a curfew.
Closing time doesn’t equal curfew because you’re in a country where human rights are questioned. I don’t care if that fits your agenda, prejudices or Twitter boasts over “curfew” breaking.
BBC journalist, travel agent, tourist etc — IT IS NOT A FUCKING CURFEW.
Oh and for the record — regulations stating that the Old Quarter, with its high-density population, its maze of streets, its tourist hotels, its traffic problems etc etc, can’t allow people to drink all night — are exceptionally sensible. They are not human rights violations.
